


Seaswept

by futureboy



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Comfort, Day At The Beach, Fake AH Crew, Implied NPC Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 05:32:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futureboy/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: Matt, who’s actually in the middle of something quite important, is dragged to the seafront by the Fakes’ resident nuisance. (And he’ll tell you now - it’s quite a feat to have earned that particular title.)





	Seaswept

**Author's Note:**

> [RPF disclaimer: Written according to guidelines set by RT employees (to the best of my knowledge). This is a fictional series of events using characters inspired by real people.]
> 
> This was for [@captainandersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainandersmith)’s birthday the longest time ago. ♥ I am so sorry it’s so late!! Please forgive this busy bee.

“...You look stressed out.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Matt retorts instantly. He’s tap-tap-tapping away at his keyboard, trying to hack into the security cameras of the newly renovated Kortz Center, seeing as they’ve got a very pricey collection of artifacts coming in for a few weeks. It’s putting him under considerable duress in such a tight timeframe, but he can do it. Preparation is key.

“Come on, Matt. It can wait another day,” Gavin grins, “and if it can’t, I’ll just rope Alfredo into helping you out tomorrow. Maybe _I’ll_ help too, an’ all.”

Matt keeps typing. “How generous of you.”

He’s spun around in his seat, _very_ rudely indeed - Gavin isn’t standing on ceremony today. “Matt Bragg,” he whines, drawing out the vowels, “ _I’m_ bored and _you’re_ overworked. Take a damn day off and come to the beach with me.”

“The beach?”

“Yeah,” he says enthusiastically, “there’s all sortsa stuff there, some of it looks top. The pier’s in full swing at the mo. So let’s take the afternoon off and go and have a nosey. Sound good?”

Matt finally looks up; Gavin’s leaning on his desk, propped up by only one lazy arm, standing at a very strange angle. There’s a devilish, hopeful grin plastered over his face.

And, well, what with plaster masterpieces being fragile and that, Matt has a brief second of indecision. His job is to make sure the artwork makes it out intact, after all. If he’s overworked, he might make mistakes.

“I guess I _have_ been working all morning,” he admits.

Gavin crows with glee. “That’s the spirit!” he cheers, “c’mon, Matt, let’s take our bikes down. It’s a good day for a bike ride.”

“Mine’s in the shop. You nudged me into Jack and we both ate shit, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Well, let’s just take mine, then.”

Matt’s heart does an odd little wiggle, which he really hopes is due to years of soaking his arteries in saturated fats, and not whatever half-concocted plot Gavin has in store for the two of them.

All too quickly, he finds himself drifting about on the road out front, waiting outside the garage door, kicking up stones from the sidewalk until his friend decides to make a reappearance:

and an appearance is definitely what he makes.

There’s a nasty, metallic grinding noise as the shutters heave themselves skyward. As Matt peers into the dusty darkness of the garage, he has to jump backwards to avoid being run over. Gavin _guns it_ out of the parking lot like some kind of asshole rockstar, screeching to a halt and swinging his back tyre around, so that the bike’s in prime position for Matt to clamber onto. Perfect parking.

Gav pops his visor. “Alright, love,” he says easily, holding out a helmet to Matt, “let’s get this show on the road. Castles to build. Donkeys to ride.”

“There’d better _not_ be donkeys,” Matt warns. “Is this a matching helmet?”

“I wasn’t gonna buy two different ones, was I? Get on the bike, man, come _on_.”

Fair enough. Matt awkwardly throws one leg over the backseat, adjusts the helmet where it’s squishing his face all wrong, and holds on to the lapels of Gavin’s jacket for dear damn life.

He’s right to.

Gavin rides _quick_.

The adrenaline rush of speeding down the avenues and boulevards of Los Santos is a welcome change from the three solid days he’s been glued to his office chair. Seriously, it’s starting to develop butt impressions, and to be honest, it’s not just the rich parts of the city that impress him - it’s the way Gavin weaves his way through complicated traffic, or zips down narrow alleyways, or the way that Matt can physically feel him chuckling to himself when some jerkoff flips them the bird for cutting in front.

“Man, I love you,” he mumbles, into the soft padding of the inside of the helmet. Gavin doesn’t hear him; Matt barely hears himself.

The air is fresher down by the coastline. Gavin drives more slowly here - each plank of the boardwalk booms and thuds under the bike, a merry _clunkclunkclunk_ that lets the whole beachfront know they’ve arrived.

Gavin slots the bike into a free space and wrenches the helmet from his face, ruddy faced and jubilant: “sea air!” he announces, to no-one in particular, “there’s nothing like it. Most healing thing in the world. Always reminds me of that bit in ‘The Witches’, did you ever read that, Matt? Maybe we should go to Norway. That’d be class.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Matt says absently. He hands Gavin his helmet and smooths down his flyaway hair. “This never seemed like your kind of scene, Gavin, I’ll be honest.”

“What exactly do you think my scene is?”

He starts walking aimlessly. Gavin skips a little to catch up. “I don’t know,” says Matt, “I guess, like, those white cliffs with olive trees and brush on them that you get in Italy? Whole towns on the side of a mountain. Terracotta houses and a pool to lie by. You’re poolside, not beachside.”

“Maybe I just didn’t have anyone to go with ‘til now,” he grins.

Matt and Gavin fall into step with each other. The air is thick with clouds of sugary cotton candy smells, cut with the light scent of popcorn and middling fried pastries. In the afternoon, the multi-coloured bulbs adorning all the stalls and rides aren’t the alluring glow that evening brings out, but mere embellishments to pastel and spray-paint themed attractions.

It’s busy. It’s summer.

It’s _nice_.

“You’d be a dab hand at the rifle range, Matt.”

“I thought you were trying to get me to have a day off?” Matt teases.

“Yeah, yeah, alright, smarty pants,” he retorts. “What are you gonna do, then?”

Matt considers. Not ring toss. Not raffle tickets. Definitely not a rollercoaster.

“That,” he says, and points.

Gavin gasps. “You’d go on the Big Wheel with me? Jeremy always says no!”

“Figures. He’s... not good with heights.”

“Tell me about it, he almost threw up when I took him up in that chopper. Remember?”

“I do,” Matt says, think of Jeremy’s pale face and sweaty palms against the glass, and wonders if he’ll be in a similar state today, crammed into a slowly cycling booth with the worst crush he’s had in years. It might be his only chance - he’s seizing the opportunity with both nervous hands.

Like most things that Matt worries over, it turns out to be mostly okay. Gavin’s warm body pressed into his side makes him jittery, energised, but he’s strangely grounded by it. Sounds drift, up here in the air. Projected announcements, and screams from the rollercoaster riders, and random snatches of melody floating away from their speakers. It makes Matt want to do something dumb, like reach out and hold Gavin’s hand.

He doesn’t do it. He watches the lights rise and fall instead, hovering in the sky like dandelion seeds for brief moments.

It’s how his chances with Gavin feel, most days. And it’s how his thoughts drift back to the work he should be doing, too, insignificant puffs of very little consistency floating around in his brain, until Gavin drags him over to some other attraction. A booth, with a crystal ball mounted on top. The clairvoyant tries to convince Gav that the woman of his dreams is short, with blonde hair, and beautiful eyes with a steady stare. (Kinda like the clairvoyant herself.)

“That doesn’t sound like the _anything_ of my dreams,” Gavin says politely, pulling his hand away and standing to leave; Matt declines a turn with the clairvoyant.

“It’s candy floss,” he says, when Matt buys cotton candy.

“What fucking floss do you use?!”

“What _cotton_ do you use, Matthew?” Gavin retorts.

“At least we’re not French. I think they call it ‘daddy’s beard’,” Matt says thoughtfully, and Gavin recoils with disgust.

They skip the rifle range. It feels like cheating. So they take a walk along the beach, instead.

“Ay, look! Donkeys!”

“ _No_.”

“You’re no fun.”

The further they drift from the boardwalk, the sparser the activities become. The whale watching trips are over for the day, to which Gavin promises they can go another time, even if they both get kinda seasick and don’t really care about whales at all. But the sentiment’s there, and it follows them all the way up the cliffside, as they walk along grassier banks and well-worn dirt paths.

Matt stands on the-- well, not on the edge, per se, but pretty close to it. Close enough that he can hear the crashing of the waves below, and feel the whipping of the ocean breeze in his hair, and for just one second it’s only him in the world - closing his eyes against the sun and breathing with the earth itself.

“Better than a day inside, d’ya think?”

Matt turns. Gavin’s sat on a bench a little ways behind him, sprawled out with his arm over the backrest.

“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks for getting me out of there. I guess it could wait a little longer.”

He scuffs his feet in the dirt as he makes his way over, and perches on the other end of the bench, extending his legs out into the path, and planning not to care even if someone else _was_ walking along it. Which they aren’t. Gavin and Matt are alone.

“There’s a plaque,” he says.

“Hm?”

“In loving memory,” Matt reads, tracing the engraving with his finger as he speaks, “of Georgina McKillip. Huh. Six years ago today.”

“Yeah,” says Gavin.

He folds his arms, and doesn’t speak for a very long time.

Matt tries not to look at him, but the curve of his profile draws his eye. Gavin Free. Staring out to sea. There’s a crashing wave behind every other action, Matt thinks, except when he’s faced with the real thing - and that’s when he becomes a rock pool at the mercy of the tides. Could be full, could be empty. Who knows.

“Y’know,” says Gavin quietly, breaking the spell. “We all make mistakes, we just gotta avoid the ones we can. I don’t know if that makes sense at all, but… Yeah.”

Matt rubs at the plaque’s engraving again.

It’s not just his day off.

“Do you want…?” Matt starts, “do you want, I don’t know, a hug, or something? I figured I should ask, in case you don’t, but--”

Gav practically melts into his side, warm and gentle, and Matt’s arm comes to rest over his shoulders.

“Okay,” says Matt.

He presses his face into Gavin’s hair. It smells like styling gel, and sea salt.

“You wanna go do something not work-related back at the penthouse? I’ve got some debugging to do,” he says, “we could play a game whilst all my shit compresses.”

Gavin sits up. “You could debug me," he says, waggling his eyebrows, and Matt sighs.

“Must you dirty everything?”

“You love it.”

“I do,” Matt grimaces. “Not enough to go on a donkey ride, though. Let’s get cotton candy--”

“Candy _floss_ \--”

“--and head back,” he finishes, ignoring him. “I bet Michael would have a movie marathon with us.”

“With bevs?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Without Michael?” Gavin says hopefully.

Matt stands up, and offers his hand out. ‘Without Michael’ is his first clue as to how things are progressing; Gavin twining their fingers together is the second.

“Drive me home,” he says. Gavin leads him all the way back up the boardwalk, and doesn’t even spare a glance for the Big Wheel as they pass.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudoses are appreciated! And my [fic blog](http://futureboy-ao3.tumblr.com/) is here. >u<


End file.
